The Last Song Was Inspired By Miley Cyrus

Today, Miley Cyrus will make her feature film debut in The Last Song. The film written by novel author Nicholas Sparks, the man behind some of the most melodramatic romance movies of the past decade. The writer penned the screenplay and the book for which the film is based with Cyrus in mind, something he’s never done for any other actor.

Sparks is no stranger to having his novels adapted into major feature films, but this was the first time where the casting came before the film or even the actual story. Cyrus made it known that she wanted to work on one of his movies, but there wasn’t a property available for her at the time, so what did Sparks do? He wrote one!

I was approached in June of 2008 by Offspring Entertainment and Disney was working with Miley. They had a two movie thing, she was going to do “Hannah Montana” for the first one and she said (through the grapevine) she may want to do something like A Walk to Remember and asked if I had anything. So, I really spent most of the summer conceiving the story primarily as a novel. I spoke to Miley, I got to input some things that she wanted specifically and didn’t want specifically in the film, came up with the story, and presented it and we all decided to go with it.

Even though he underwent a completely different writing process for The Last Song than his previous works, Sparks didn’t view his technique as unconventional or going against tradition.

I was just really trying to make the best story that I could, the most interesting characters that I could, whether it was Ronnie or whether it was Will or whether it was Steve. Any of these characters, I try to make them all as interesting as I possibly could. For me, there wasn’t much difference for whether I wrote the novel first or the screenplay because it was the idea that came first.

The Last Song does include several complex characters as do all of Sparks’ properties. The film is directed by Julie Anne Robinson and stars Cyrus, Liam Hemsworth, Greg Kinnear, and Kelly Preston and opens nationwide in theaters on Wednesday, March 31st.

Are you familiar with the story for The Last Song? Do you think Cyrus can pull off Sparks’ material?

While I love Nicholas Sparks, and The Last Song is my favorite novel of his, I think Miley's acting ability (or, rather, the lack of it) ruined the entire movie. The scenes that should been touching feel so flat. It just didn't work: she doesn't have the talent either as a singer or an actress to pull off anything on this scale: all she's cut out for is kiddie shows on Saturday mornings.